“They’re going to kill me,” I said, staring through the binoculars at the village of what I’d been calling Yetis. Obviously they weren’t actually Yetis since this wasn’t Earth but they were eight feet tall and looked like a cross between a gorilla and a polar bear so I figured the name was fitting.
“No, they are not.” Ai said, her soft voice coming through a little tinny on my survival suit’s earpiece.
“They’re going to kill me, rip out my teeth to make a necklace, and eat me. Probably not even in that order.” The two guards at the entrance to the village did indeed wear necklaces of teeth. There weren’t any human teeth in it as far as I could tell but since, as far as I knew, I was the only human on this horrible planet that wasn’t exactly comforting.
“They are not going to kill you, Euclid.” Her voice was a pretty good imitation of human speech. Taking into account how old she was it was excellent. But no artificial intelligence could have said that with enough confidence to make me actually believe it.
“How do you know?” I asked, not expecting a real answer.
“Because the plan is an effective one with a high chance of success.”
“That doesn’t mean that it’s going to work. I’m very unlucky.”
“Very well. Return to the ship and I will use the remaining power to keep you warm enough to survive for six more days. Then you will die.”
I ground my teeth. She wasn’t wrong. That was my only other option. We had to have more power for the ship just to keep going, much less to escape this frozen hell. The Yetis had a power source in one of those igloos. I didn’t know if they were technologically advanced enough to get any use out of it or not. The bone spears the guards held and the fact that I’d never seen any of them using anything like a gun implied that they didn’t. But it was never safe to assume anything on Persephone-4.
My survival suit beeped and for a moment the ambient temperature and the suit’s temperature popped up on my HUD. The ambient temperature could’ve just been an icon of a middle finger. It would’ve meant the same thing. The suit’s temperature on the other hand had dropped a full degree as the suit was on low power mode. I was cold in the suit but at least it was keeping me at a survivable twelve degrees celsius. Outside of the suit it was a murderous negative 34 degrees.
There was nothing for it. I had to do this or die. Or maybe *and* die. Either way, it was time to move.
“Ah, I see you have chosen to go along with the original plan. That’s good.”
“How did I manage to find the one A.I. in the universe with the ability to be sarcastic?”
“I was not employing sarcasm. It is good that you are choosing life over death.”
For a moment the only sound was the howling wind.
“But you did say that you were not very lucky.”
I wished there was a way for me to rub my eyes in frustration but, because of the survival suit I wore, I hadn’t been able to touch my own skin since I crashed here. The good thing about the survival suit was that it was designed to be worn for years at a time if necessary. But the bad thing about the survival suit was that I couldn’t take it off if I wanted to keep surviving. Even back on the ship with Ai, it was too cold for me to take off the suit. We didn’t have power to spare for heating the ship.
I was lucky to have the suit for sure. It kept me (sort of) warm, kept my skin clean, and even processed food for me from calorie dense, vitamin enriched nutrition blocks. But I wasn’t ever really comfortable. It was always colder than I wanted, the cleaning process itched like hell and the “food” it poured into my mouth through a built in straw tasted bland on a good day. And I’d never get used to the process it used for getting rid of uh… waste.
But it did have a few very cool features. Camouflage for example. As I understood it, thousands of tiny cameras all over the suit projected images of my surroundings on the opposite side of the suit. It was amazing but it also ate through my suit’s power to do it. And it couldn’t cover the tracks I made as I walked. The snowshoe feature could though, for the most part. The suit’s material spread out around my feet, distributing my weight over a wider area. It didn’t completely prevent me from leaving a trail but it was far less obvious. Unfortunately, the reduced material around my legs and feet meant that the cold was seeping in there way more than it should have.
“My toes are going to fall off.”
“You shouldn’t be in danger of frostbite in your extremities for another forty five minutes or so,” Ai said.
“Oh. Well good. I’ll be nice and toasty by then.”
“Because you’ll have found the power source?”
I was getting close enough to the yeti’s igloos to start to smell the fires they lit inside to stay warm. It smelled like oil and cooking meat, both likely coming from the blubbery, whale-like creatures that lived in the sea a few miles to the west. The worst part was, to my flavor starved body, it smelled amazing.
“Because they’re going to cook and eat me.”
“Oh.”
I was coming close to the guards now. I’d been able to hide the limited tracks made by my approach by hiding behind snow dunes but that wouldn’t be an option much longer. From what I’d seen the guard patrolled on a regular basis around the camp before heading inside to warm up. Even with their thick fur, the yetis didn’t want to stay outside for extended periods. But they always had someone come out to relieve them first so I couldn’t just sneak in when they went inside. I also couldn’t get in from any other direction because they had erected a high wall of ice around the village and covered it with razor sharp teeth they’d pulled from their kills. My suit was tough but mainly designed to protect from blunt impacts, like falling from a cliff. Those teeth would slice right through it.
“I recommend this approach,” Ai said and used the heads up display on the screen in my helmet to light up a way around the snow drifts that connected with the path the yetis made around the village as they patrolled.
“Walk in their tracks, huh? That could work.”
It was excruciating. I had to move slowly or risk leaving bigger tracks. But all the while I could feel the cold seeping in through the suit. And I couldn’t stop expecting to turn around and find eight feet of angry fur, muscle and claws standing behind me. But eventually I was able to get to the path.
“Now what? I still can’t get past the guards.”
“Wait for them to patrol. Stay out of the way until they pass and then go in. The suit’s camouflage should keep you hidden even if they come very close to you.”
“Should. ‘Should’ is not a very comforting word.”
I almost wished the suit wasn’t soundproof so I couldn’t have these conversations. But then the Yetis would probably have heard my teeth chattering. I sat there, wishing for probably the millionth time that the suit at least had some games installed for moments like this, until finally the two guards came around the corner. They plodded about, talking to one another in their odd, ululating, language. It was a mixture of grunts and warbles with the occasional roar thrown in. All the same, sitting there forced to watch them, they seemed oddly human.
The pair conversed in hushed tones at first, then one said something quick and short. His friend punched him in the arm. A punch like that probably would have broken my bones but the yeti jokester just rolled with it and let out a peel of snorting laughter while his friend mimed mock violence in his general direction.
The whole scene made me feel terribly alone. I had Ai but it wasn’t the same as a person there beside you. She couldn’t punch me for my stupid jokes, though perhaps that was a mercy. I might need a lot of punching.
After the guards were gone it was finally time to move. I crept to the entrance of the village, an arch of ice that had swinging gates that could be shut, presumably at night or during an attack. Inside the village was surprisingly active. By which I mean it wasn’t just a bunch of freezing eight foot tall monsters, hiding in their ice huts and grumbling about the cold. That’s what I’d have probably done. A few seemed to be in a larger structure cooking while others were cutting into the carcass of one of the grey knobbley skinned whale-like creatures they hunted. A few of the yeti children were out and playing with one another in the snow. At least I assumed they were children since they were smaller than the rest. They were still taller than me.
I moved slowly, sticking to the well worn paths. The yetis had trodden over them enough to pack the ice down into clumps so it was unlikely that any of them would notice my footprints mixed in among theirs. I still had to be careful though. Any wrong move could bring the entire village down on me. Once one of the kids nearly crashed into me trying to avoid its friends snowballs. One of the snowballs actually did hit me but it was a glancing blow that no one seemed to notice. Still it took me almost a full minute to stop panicking and get moving again.
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The building I wanted was in the back of the village off on its own. And as I got closer I noticed a problem.
“It appears that none of the yetis have entered this structure since the last snowfall,” Ai said in my ear. Was that a hint of uncertainty in her voice?
“Yeah, there’s no tracks to follow in.”
“This… alters my calculations of your odds.”
“You don’t say.”
“Euclid…” She started. There was definitely a moment’s hesitation in her voice. “Perhaps there is another way. I can run more scans. There might be another source of power in range.”
That was tempting. Really tempting. I stood within twenty feet of my goal and all I could think about was how much I wanted to creep away.
“Ai, how likely is it that there’s another option?”
“Not... very,” she said. Her voice was quiet. There was a lot to read into that quiet.
I clenched my hands into fists at my side. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted off this frozen rock. And the next step that that goal was right there within reach. I wished the choice wasn’t mine. I wished there was someone else who could be here and do this for me. I just wanted out.
I closed my eyes for a long moment trying not to shake too much. I don’t know how long I stood there caught in the jaws of indecision. But it was long enough for the situation to change.
One of the small yetis had broken away from its fellows. I only noticed it because the motion sensors built into the suit alerted me to something moving my way. The creature was unusually short, even for the children I’d seen. It’s movements were furtive, constantly looking over its shoulder and seeming indecisive about whether to walk quickly or slowly so as to avoid drawing attention.
It came to stand where I had been just a moment or two earlier, looking at the untouched snow between it and the hut. Absentmindedly it fiddled with a necklace that hung to its chest; a pendant made of a shark’s tooth the size of my whole hand. It looked over its shoulders once again and, seeming to take courage from the shark tooth, hurried through the snow to the hut.
Leaving me free to follow. I did, careful to place my feet into the yeti’s footprints. It wasn’t easy with invisible feet. I had to fight the urge to look over my own shoulder the whole way to the hut.
Inside it was mostly dark. The exception sat in the center of the room, bathing it in an unnatural blue-green haze. It was a cylinder, almost as tall as I was, and the light came from the display on its side. It was a battery of some kind. Ai might have been able to tell me what kind or where it had come from but maybe not. She’d landed here hundreds of years ago and her knowledge of the technological achievements that had happened since then only came through hacking the computers of other crashed ships. Smashing into the planet at terminal velocity tended to have a negative effect on most ship computers and their data so her knowledge was incomplete at best. It didn’t really matter though. A battery was a battery and based on her scans there was enough energy in it to power our ship for a year or more. Maybe even turn on the heat.
I just had to steal it. Which was a lot easier to do when I thought that it was just sitting there gathering dust in this igloo.
Instead it looked like it was attached to a number of devices. Tubes and hoses led from the battery to several different sections of the igloo, connecting to different terminals and smaller hand held pieces throughout the room. At a glance I couldn’t tell exactly what they did, but it was clear that the yetis weren’t just sitting around worshiping the glowing things like savages. Well, they probably weren’t anyway.
The room was filled with gadgets and whatsits galore. God only knew how many different ships the yetis must have plundered to get them all. And the small yeti was looking at them all with even more wonder than me.
He (or she, I couldn’t tell) was a problem for me. My intention had been to siphon off as much energy as I could and escape. Molded into the survival suit’s back casing was a reservoir for energy that could easily hold at least as much as that battery had based on Ai’s scans. But I couldn’t siphon the energy and stay invisible because whoever designed this suit obviously hated me. So as long as the little yeti stayed in the room, I couldn’t do much.
“Ai, you seeing this?”
“Yes… this is troubling. I was certain that the yeti’s were not using the power they’d gathered for anything. And yet, this set-up seems to indicate otherwise.”
“Dammit. I was hoping I wasn’t seeing things correctly. What could they be doing with it all?”
“It’s hard to say. Move closer. I need to see more.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a body that can get ripped apart,” I grumbled but I started moving. Besides the hum of the battery it was deathly silent in the room. One slip, one wrong step and the little yeti would know I was there.
While I moved about the room, examining the battery and the things it powered, it was impossible for me not to watch the small yeti. He moved about the room carefully, always glancing back at the door as if he expected some monster to come barreling through it, ready to eat him. It’s possible that I was projecting. But there was a particular piece in the room that he was continually coming back to.
It was in very bad shape, the outer casing bent and warped all to hell, wires and circuitry exposed. The entire thing was an absolute mess. But the moment the suit’s scanners analyzed it and tossed what it did onto my heads up display, I knew why the Yeti was messing with it. It was a heating unit. One that, if properly implemented, could easily heat every single one of the igloos in the village. Obviously, without some way to heat their dwellings the yetis wouldn’t have been able to survive out here, but with a machine to do it instead of likely using resources from the whales they caught, there was no telling the number of logistical problems it could solve for them.
The little yeti was here trying to make a better life for it’s whole village. From what the suit’s scanners were telling me it could probably work. The heater wasn’t nearly in working order but it was definitely salvageable. Some part of my mind wondered how well it would heat the ship I was calling home. But I couldn’t take the thing even if I had the heart to steal it from them. I wanted to decloak and show the little yeti how to fix the heater. With Ai and the survival suit’s help it would be easy. But even if I tried, the yeti would just yell and summon guards.
As if the yetis outside had heard that thought, I heard feet crunching in the snow outside. My heart tried to leap out of my chest even as my brain screamed that there was no way they could know I was there unless I did something stupid that showed them where I was. The little yeti was in a much worse position. Even in the dark I could see it’s eyes go wide as it cast about for somewhere to hide.
It scrambled behind a large pile of precarious junk just as a pair of the biggest yetis I’d yet seen came ducking in under the entrance. The pair talked in hushed tones, revealing enormous and wickedly sharp teeth. I told myself that they were looking for the little yeti, not me. And yet my heart continued it’s escape attempt, rattling my ribs.
But a new thought occured to me. If the guards found the little yeti, surely they’d take it outside. I’d be left alone with the battery. All I had to do was give away its hiding position.
I didn’t want to do that. The little thing (that was still taller than me) was crouched and clearly almost as terrified of being caught as I was. But I needed that energy.
I made my way towards the little yeti’s hiding place, trying to time my footfalls with those of the guards to muffle any noise. Once I was there, all I had to do was nudge one of the dozens of devices piled up haphazardly and the little yeti’s shelter would vanish. I hesitated, my hand on something that looked like a welding gun.
Sitting there, crouched and cowering, the yeti brought back memories from before I’d been stranded. Memories of hiding in alleys with stolen food. Waiting to be caught and punished, maybe killed. I shook my head, pushing away the thoughts. This village was small. They wouldn’t kill the little yeti. Surely it had family here. I turned back towards the guards who were beginning to relax and move back in the direction of the door way. The battery’s soft glow filled my eyes.
I nudged the device.
The pile came crashing down like a meteor shower. The noise was terrific in the quiet and the little yeti let out a screech as it threw itself away from the avalanche. The guards whirled and spotted it immediately. It started babbling clearly trying to come up with some kind of excuse for being there. Just as clearly, the guards weren’t having any of it.
While I watched them haul the small yeti out, a voice filled my head. It wasn’t Ai, wasn’t playing on the speakers in my suit. It was a voice from another day, one that felt much further away than it really was.
A man’s got to do his business. Can’t get caught up in anyone else’s.
I bit my lip hard, hoping the pain would keep the words and the image I knew would follow them at bay. Rip was gone. It was just me. There was no one to help me.
I set to work as soon as the noise from the guards and the small yeti faded. Of course it wasn’t as simple as connecting a cord to a port in the suit. Nothing was ever that simple.
“Euclid?” Ai asked, her computer-perfect voice hesitant. “Your heart rate is abnormally elevated. Are you oka-“
“Not now Ai. I need to concentrate.” My voice was harsh even to my own ears, another thing to hate myself for. The silence was deafening then.
It took ten agonizing minutes to run the battery through enough different converters that my suit was able to accept it. All things considered it was a miracle that the suit was able to handle it at all so I shouldn’t have been so angry but Rip’s voice haunted me the whole time.
I settled beside the battery, held the last cord that I needed to connect and tried to go over everything in my head, make sure I hadn’t made any mistakes. But all I could think about was the look of terror on the little yetis face as they’d dragged him out.
“Screw it.” I said and jammed in the cord. Predictably, this was a mistake.
First the battery let out a beep that was loud enough to make me jump in the quiet. Then it began to scream. The howling alarm flung my body into action, slapping at the various converters first before I saw what was on the battery’s screen. Alien letters that my suit helpfully translated.
Thief.
“No no no, Ai hack that! Shut it down!”
“I am trying,” she said in her impossibly calm voice. Some part of my brain saw the percentage of power in my suit rocket up to 100%. A small notification flagged in the corner of my vision telling me that the suit’s reservoir was charging as well. So at least the battery wasn’t wrong when it called me a thief.
It only took Ai a few frantic seconds to shut down the alarm and for a moment it was quiet and I thought that maybe everything was fine, maybe they hadn’t heard.
Then I heard the noise at the door. Something breathing in heavy, angry snorts. I turned knowing what I’d see: two huge guards holding their huge weapons, staring directly at me.
“Ah, shit.”